grew so general that in several jails posts were driven into the ground in front of the outer doors. These precautions would have proved less successful than they did but for the Whipping Act. Certain offences may be punished either with imprisonment or flogging, and magistrates took advantage of the alternative to lessen as far as possible the pressure on the jails. Indeed, some Courts appear to have strained the meaning of the law. Rice stealing formed the most numerous class of offences, and theft is one of the crimes for which whipping may be awarded. But the Indian penal Code makes a distinction if several persons join together in order to steal, and robbery by a gang of five or more individuals is the most serious offence against property known to the law. Persons found guilty of this crime ordinarily receive a sentence of transportation; last year many of them escaped with a flogging. In several districts the criminal business became so heavy that additional judges had to be appointed, and the Sessions Courts held jail-deliveries for the first time during the great autumn festival of the Hindus. Before the end of July the famine had developed a slave trade. Parents had ceased to be able to support their children, and they preferred selling them to seeing them starve. Such transactions have always been common in India during seasons of distress; indeed, John Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, wrote to his wife, in a year when prices did not reach one-half the rates of 1866, that he was purchasing black babies every morning for a few shillings apiece. The buyers generally adopt the children, and with these transactions the law does not interfere; but there is always a proportion of them reserved for a worse fate. One of the many blessings which the transfer to the Crown has wrought for India is the abolition of Slavery. The last enactment of the Company on the subject distinctly recognizes the existence of slaves, and only forbids the Courts to give effect to contracts for their barter; the code that formed the first great legislative work of the Queen's Government in Bengal pronounced slavery of whatever form illegal. Notwithstanding the severe penalties attached to slave dealing, however, the nefarious trade revived during the scarcity of 1866. Infamous women went about buying up beautiful girls; in the capital and its suburbs, under the very eye of Government, eleven persons were said to be in prison at one time awaiting trial for the offence, and suspicions of conniving at, if not of actually patronizing the traffic, were mixed up with the name of a noble Mussulman family. The number of unfortunates who died from hunger will never be accurately known. India wholy lacks the statistical machinery which has been so fruitful of salutary reforms in our own country. Even the official census is the result of an elaborate system of guessing, and many of its returns are ludicrously incorrect. No register is kept of births or deaths; and of the estimates promulgated with regard to the loss of life during the recent famine, one half are the mere conjectures of officials, the other half are the mere conjectures of journalists. The highest computation we have seen returns the deaths at one million, but it makes no attempt to discriminate between those who died from the effects of the famine and those whose death was the natural result of disease. If it include both, we are inclined, from personal observation, to consider it too low. The ordinary mortality of the twenty-seven million inhabitants of the famine stricken districts, amounts, at the death-rate prevalent in Lower Bengal, to seven hundred and fifty thousand, and the additional deaths brought about, directly and indirectly, by a year of famine, certainly exceeds the remaining two hundred and fifty thousand. If the estimate means that one million persons perished from the effects of the famine alone, it is too high. The town in Western Bengal where the mortality reached its climax was Raneegunge. It is situated close to the north road, and received the whole drift of the northern and western parts of Bengal proper and the adjacent hillcountry. A depot had been established forty miles to the west, to stem the rush of the highland population, but cholera visited it so severely that the starving crowds endeavored rather to push on for Raneegunge. Raneegunge, too, was unfortunate in being the receptacle for all who broke down upon their pilgrimage from the upper provinces to Jagganath, or on the road from the west country to Calcutta. Many of the travelers perished by the wayside, and a still larger number reached Raneegunge in a stage of exhaustion at which relief comes too late. Some of them could not swallow, and died with the rice in their mouths; others could not retain food; and of many the digestive functions had ceased to act, and a hearty meal only hastened death. The magistrate in charge, a gentleman to whose untiring humanity the poor wayfarers from the northwestern districts owe much, stated that during a short time eighteen paupers perished every night in and around Raneegunge, and during several months, the average was probably not less than ten. The writer twice visited the town, and had an opportunity of classifying the victims. Sixty per cent. were lepers, and persons who had been suffering under scrofulous or chronic diseases not superinduced by hunger; of the remainder, the immediate cause of death was in general fever or an acute bowel-complaint. Very few seemed to have suffered the last pangs of starvation; and it is not too much to say, that of the unhappy sufferers, even in Raneegunge, one half would have died had there been no famine. Indeed, the general effect of the scarcity was rather to accelerate the death of diseased, and, in a political point of view, useless members of the community, than to increase the rate of mortality among the able-bodied laboring classes. Judging from personal observations made during three tours, at the beginning, about the middle, and towards the end of the famine, and from the uncertain official returns now before us, we would estimate that to the ordinary death-rate must be added five hundred thousand deaths caused or accelerated by the famine. Of these, three hundred thousand may be considered to have been accelerated, and two hundred thousand wholly caused, by want of food. Assuming the population of Lower Bengal to be thirty-five millions, and the death-rate to be two and a half per cent., the loss of life caused directly or indirectly by the famine amounts to oneseventieth of the whole inhabitants, and the effect upon the death-rate for the The year has been to raise it from eight hundred and seventy-five thousand to thirteen hundred and seventy-five thousand, or rather more than one half. lowest computation of the deaths in 1769-70 shows a loss, not of one-seventieth, as in 1866, but of one fifth or one sixth part of the population. That the famine did not reach above a low stratum of society, the progress of education in 1866 abundantly proves. One of the districts which suffered severely was Burdwan. The Maharajah, a lineal decendant of the prince of whom we have spoken in a former page, fed in the chief town alone from eight to nine thousand people every day, and large proportion of the paupers were so emaciated that he found it neccessary to provide hospitals, doctors, and medical comforts in order to keep them alive. The number of pupils in the four principal schools had increased from 878 in September 1865 to 994 in September 1866, showing an increase of 13 per cent. during the famine months. The quality of the education sought had increased in a still higher ratio. Boys had left the Maharajah's vernacular or lower class school to the number of 27, and gone his Highness's upper class or English school, which exhibits 811 on the rolls in September 1866, against 683 in September 1865. The increase in higherclass education, therefore, had amounted to nearly 19 per cent. during the scarcity. In smaller towns, public instruction prospered in an equal degree. Mymaree, a village sixteen miles to the south-east of Burdwan, had suffered so severely that many of its inhabitants deserted their homes, and the district relief committee found it necessary to organize a rice-depot on the spot. Yet the pupils in the Mymaree English school had increased from 81 in September 1865 to 102 in September 1866, or more than 25 per cent., and the lower class vernacular school had increased by more than 12 per cent. to If the famine anywhere affected education, it would certainly have done so in Raneegunge and Bishenpore. The condition of the first town has already been described. In the midst of the general misery, the attendance on the Government school rose from 114 to 129, or nearly 14 per cent., and the manager thought the time had come to raise the class of the education afforded. The case of Bishenpore was still more striking. This town, once the capital of Western Bengal, and the seat of a flourishing manufacture, had been converted into a pauper city. Its many-colored silks lay mildewed in the weavers' houses, the artisans had fled to Calcutta, and instead of the ceaseless rattle of the shuttle, stillness reigned in the streets. Those who remained were prevented by their caste from accepting relief at the depot, and shoals of diseased and dying creatares daily poured in from the adjacent hills and jungles. "Cholera has broken out here," wrote the relieving-officer in August, "and bids fair to exterminate the whole of Bishenpore." As the traveler entered the town, he passed through a belt of ground whitened with skulls. Macaulay relates, that after the carnage of Aghrim, the dogs acquired such a taste for human flesh that they fell upon living men. The same thing took place in Bishenpore during the famine, and the houseless paupers slept close to one another in groups for the purpose of mutual protection. Until 1866, Bishenpore possessed only one school. So backward was education, that even to this single institution Government had not ventured to apply the grant-in-aid system, but defrayed the whole charge itself. In 1866 two new schools were set up in and near Bishenpore by private individuals, the one an English, the other a vernacular institution, and were conducted successfully through the dearth. The English school-house had formerly been a temple, but now the idols were tumbled out into the yard, and the chambers filled with students of Euclid and Smith's History of Rome. Notwithstanding the numbers who flocked to the new institutions, the old Government school held its own. Forty-six boys were present in September 1866, against twenty-eight on the last open day of the previous September. The truth is, that the few cases in which a respectable man was compelled to withdraw his children from school, were more than compensated by additions from families who had not hitherto sought education. For a famine, like a war, is prolific of new men, and the first thing that a successful speculator in Bengal does is to send his children to school. The writer paid repeated visits to the relief depots in seven districts, and endeavored to make himself acquainted with the previous circumstances of the paupers. It was impossible to speak to every one in the throng, but as nearly as he could estimate, he came personally in contact with 5000 persons. Each of them had his tale of reverses, a tale which never suffered for want of a little coloring, but we did not meet with a single man who professed to have been in the position of a well-to-do shop-keeper, or of a substantial peasant, holding five acres, nor with a single woman who represented herself as the widow of such a man. Many of them said they had had land, but in very few instances had the quantity exceeded two acres, and ninetenths of them were professional beggars, leprous and maimed persons, cripples, day-laborers who eked out their wages by means of public charity, the wives and children of artisans who had deserted their homes, aliens from the starved hill-districts, pilgrims who had fallen sick on the high-road, and strays and waifs of various races who, through indolence or misfortune, had drifted into the rice-depots. It was essentially a proletarian famine. An abundant harvest in September put an end to all apprehensions of another year of distress, and the work of sending back the laboring classes to their former homes and wonted avocations be gan. This, in order to be done safely, had to be done slowly, and even at the present day the pauper population presents grave difficuties. The lesson of the scarcity of 1866 is, that a famine, like a pestilence, in order to be dealt with successfully, must be dealt with before its actual presence becomes felt. No specific has been discovered for cholera, but cholera has ceased to make the terrible ravages which it did on its first two raids through the country. We owe our comparative exemption from the epidemic less to medical skill during its visits than to the sanitary precautions which have been taken before it makes its appearance. Nor has any specific yet been discovered for a famine. State charity cannot, even in in this country, reach a certain class of the poor, and not a year passes without some sad tale of death from starvation. But state charity in Bengal has to encounter two enemies unknown in England. Time and space are continually frustrating the efforts of the Government, and during the past year, while rice was offered to every one who would take it, half a million of people perished because they could not reach the depots in time. Food could be distributed from the Scilly Islands to the Orkneys in less time than it could be distributed through a single one of the five-and-thirty districts of Lower Bengal. The only remedy for a famine is the progress of civilization. As capital increases, as roads and railways penetrate the country, as irrigation works extend, famines will become more and more a thing of the past in India. The classes who suffered in 1866 were those whose earnings just sufficed in ordinary seasons to feed them on the cheapest kind of food. As wages rise, the style of living will rise with them, and the day-laborers of India, like the corresponding rank in England, will have some margin to fall back upon in times of scarcity. Orissa, the part of the province on which the famine bore heavfest, is the part which is most isolated, and the only one in which the absence of a permaent arrangement for the landrevenue has kept the proprietors poor, and rendered agricultural improvements impossible. Orrissa, however, will shortly be placed on the same footing in this respect as the other districts; and the undertakings which render man independent of nature are making daily strides throughout Bengal. Before the next general failure of the crops, importation from Burmah and improved means of internal distribution will have made famine, in the terrible sense of the word, an impossibility, and a future generation will cite the five hundred thousand victims of 1866 as a proof of the low state of civilization which must then have prevailed. Fraser's Magazine. FRANCE UNDER RCHELIEU AND COLBERT.* WHATEVER may be the ultimate judg ment formed of Comte's Philosophy, no one can doubt that it is destined to engage the best attention of several generations of thinkers. On this point at least friends and foes are pretty certain to be agreed. It is a vast structure right in the path of human progress, and whether it shall prove, as its friends assert, a magnificent causeway along which future generations of mankind may safely travel to yet unknown regions of truth and beauty; or, as its foes think, a huge obstruction which must laboriously be removed out of the way; both equally must admit that, in either case, it will occupy the energies of the best minds for a good while to come. Whatever is to be done with it, it can no longer be ignored. It is not only here in our midst, but, from the nature of the case, it is everywhere; along every line in which human thought can move, speculators, if they advance far enough, are sure to meet with it, and must either come to terms with it or overthrow it. For it is not a theory or generalization in some outlying province of investigation, but a philosophy which embraces all provinces. Now philosophies may be superseded. They are seldom or never refuted; in other words, they may be overturned by adherents from within; they do not capitulate to adversaries from without. A philosopher should look upon his ardent disciples, if they are able as well as ardent, as probably his worst foes. Who most successfully opposed Plato? Aristotle, "the mind of his school." Who gave the severest blow to Cartesianism? Spinoza, the most illustrious of Cartesians. Who brought Kant into disrepute? His disciple Fichte. When, at long intervals in the history of the world, minds of sufficient force and compass arise which are capable of taking stock of the philosophic ideas of their epoch, of projecting a vast synthesis which approximately covers the whole visible area of human * France under Richelieu and Colbert. By J. H. Bridges, M. B. Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas. thought, the intellectual dynasty thus established has generally an easy victory over the partial antiquated systems which it supplants. It is when its authority is wide and supreme, when it undertakes to legislate en maître for the infinitely complex phenomena which go to form human nature, that its danger and insecurity really begin. Then it is that in some far distant and hitherto submissive satrapy a little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, sooner or later, is sure to gather, to grow larger and blacker with bodeful constancy, till it has at last overshadowed the heavens. And when the storm is over the old empire has passed away. So it will be, as we are led to think, with the philosophy of Comte. The world will have to submit to it before it can discard it; to pass through it before it can effectively reject it. It is well known that in none of his speculations did Comte show the splendour of his genius so magnificently as in his conceptions of history. What Lavoisier was to chemistry, what Newton was to astronomy, that Comte was to the philosophy of history. Whatever modifications or additions may in the course of time be made with regard to his views, from them will always be traced the first luminous ray which lighted up the darkness and confusion of the past. The philosophy of history, as the term was understood in the last generation, had fallen into deserved disrepute by reason of its pretensious shallowness, and hopeless instability of conception and principle. It generally amounted to little more than going through the records of the past with a perpetual sneer on the lips, and a ceaseless self congratulation on the wisdom of "our enlightened age," as compared with the besotted ignorance of our wretched ancestors. This sort of thing passed away when the philosophy of the eighteenth century itself became discredited, and then the dramatic and pictorial bistorians-the Thierrys and Macauleys-came upon the scene. These quite rightly laid it down that it was desirable to understand the past before reasoning about it; that we had better see it clearly before explaining it philosophically; that the great points were accuracy of detail and truth of coloring, and that if these were duly attended to, the philosophy of the subject might with some safety be left to take care of itself. That the dramatic historians did great service in their day, cannot be doubted. Their mistake lay in supposing that theory could be so early discarded that they themselves, among others, were not replete with theory, such as it was. The two illustrious writers just named showed this in the most striking light. One wrote a history full of ethnological theory, the other wrote one full of politicoWhig theory, and both are slowly passing away, in consequence, to the limbo of brilliant but untruthful pictures. Besides, it was felt that the dramatic historians were overdoing, and giving a little too much of a good thing. Life was too short to read the libraries of antique gossip, scandal, and intrigue which they offered for our perusal. And this local and historical coloring, and this masquerade of history, what did it all lead to? It was doubtless pleasant enough, in the hands of a clever writer, to have vivid scenes reproduced for one in which men in short cloaks, slouched hats, doublet and hose, were the picturesque actors; but it was clear that if these more or less elaborate studies in costume were all that history had to give us, many of the worst reproaches cast at it by its professed enemies were not unfounded. And amid all this sentimental partiality for the mere pageantry of the past, it would still recur to many minds to ask what was the meaning of it all? Whence arose the principles of change in the ever varied and marvellous scene disclosed to us looking down the vista of centuries? There we could see, not only men, but opinions and systems contending and prevailing. Why? The change was incessant; growth here, decay there. To what end? Över all these questions, over all this confusion and uncertainty, Comte's luminous conception of the three periods arose like the sun in his splendor, and the whole aspect of history is changed. The past lies behind us as a visibly connected organic whole, a vast drama of endless variety and numberless scenes, under all of which lies an essential unity of action and development. One of the most striking and important of these scenes Dr. Bridges has made the subject of the remarkable volume now before us-name |